Posts tagged ‘Stuff’

Lois Lane gets the cover and the core of this story, by Woolfolk, Boring and Kaye.

It opens as Superman flies out to help at a disaster, and discovers Lois Lane there, dressed as Florence Nightengale, and acting as a nurse.

Superman figures out that Lois has gone insane after seeing him change from Clark into Superman, and is taking on the identities of the various women she recently wrote about in a special article on notable women for the Daily Planet.

He pulls a trick to make her think she saw both men at the same time, which restores her mind. Sigh. These kind of stories need to be really fun to work. This isn’t.

Congo Bill’s logo has changed in this story, for reasons I will mention a bit further down, but it’s worth noting that Janu the Jungle Boy now receives credit as well, although the creative team of Miller and Smalle do not.

The story has Congo Bill become concerned when Janu starts paying a lot of attention to a young girl as they guide her father on a safari. But the story also has a man trying to kill Bill, and the father is really an impostor. It’s very complicated for the few pages it runs. But Bill is relieved at the end when Janu tells him he was only concerned for the girl’s safety, and not in love with her. I guess Congo Bill still holds his heart.

Oh, remember my comment about the logo? It has been changed to match that of Congo Bill’s new, short lived, book. The ad is actually from issue 197.

Vigilante has his final story, by Howard Sherman, in this issue.

Greg Sanders is starring in a movie as a singing cowboy, but they are concerned that the stunts are too dangerous for him, and hire Vigilante to do them. So Greg has to run around, pretending to be two people. There is also a man trying to kill him, just to add to the drama.

Stuff does not appear in this story, he made his final bow in the previous issue.

At some point after this story, the Vigilante teamed with the other Seven Soldiers of Victory against the Nebula Man, and Vigilante got sent back in time to the old west, where he remained until rescued by the Justice League and Justice Society, in the big Unknown Soldier of Victory storyline in the early 70s. But another Vigilante, Greg Saunders (instead of Sanders), had already appeared by then, also in the pages of Justice League of America.

Stuff would not return until the Vigilante series in World’s Finest, in the late 70s.

Lois Lane takes on the identity of Superwoman, but the appearance of Supergirl, in the Al Plastino story in Action 156 (May 1951).

The story begins as Lois displays her usual respect for authority, heading right through a door labelled “no admittance, ” and turning on a machine whose function she has no idea of. But you have to give her credit. When all the electrical charges start blasting her she neither screams nor runs, just wonders what the effect will be.

Of course, it endows Lois with powers much like Superman, so she adopts the identity of Superwoman again. This time, she dons a blond wig, in the hopes of keeping her identity a secret.

Before the actual introduction of Supergirl at the end of the 1950s, there would be quite a few try-out variations of the character, such as this story.

Luthor has been spying on Lois, and discovers that she is Superwoman. He uses his machine to give one of his men powers, and dresses him up as Superman, using him to lure Lois into a trap.

It’s a complicated but entertaining story, with all the fakes and phony identities. Luthor doesn’t get a lot to do, but Lois is clearly the star of the story. Superman reveals how he knew her identity – the scent of her perfume. That’s almost romantic.

Years before the introduction of the Metal Men, the name would be used in this Tommy Tomorrow story, by Swan and Fischetti, for the inhabitants of a planet populated by robots.

When rumour reaches the Planeteers of this robot world, Tommy is sent out to investigate, as they fear an invasion of killer robots. Tommy finds the world, without much difficulty. The robots consider Tommy, and other humans, as weak and inferior creations.

But as the story progresses, Tommy and the robots work together, and gain mutual admiration and respect for each other. In fact, as the story ends, Tommy lies to his superiors, keeping the robot world off the charts, in order to protect them from his own people.

The Rainbow Man is back again, in a story by Bob Brown, which puts the villain back in the urban setting he is more suited to.

The colour wheel seems to short out, sending a kaleidoscope of colours into the sky, neatly warning Vigilante that his old enemy is back. Kind of like a reverse Bat-Signal, announcing a villain’s intent.

The story isn’t bad, but neither Vigilante nor Stuff is given anything great to do – the Vigilante-cycle gets to star.

Action 149 (Oct. 50) has the earliest version of the romance between Jor-El and Lara. A version that has been entirely dropped from continuity, for very good reasons.

Al Plastino handles the art as a rocket lands on Earth, apparently just outside Metropolis. Lois Lane is covering the story, and finds three Kryptonian discs in the wreckage, which just happen to record how Jor-El and Lara came to be married. Figuring that this will give her insights into winning Superman, she plays the discs.

The whole story is just shameful, so sexist. Lara is portrayed as a dim-witted, love-sick woman, and Jor-El her brilliant and patient beau. The first disc has Lara trying to win Jor-El through cooking, which Lois emulates, although it turns out disastrously.

Lara failed in her culinary attempts as well, and then set out to clean Jor-El’s lab, while wearing what appears to be an evening gown.

Lara’s cleaning winds up causing a fire, and Jor-El decides to marry her, because she is so incompetent and needy. Wow. That’s just. I’m so glad this story fell out of canon.

The Tommy Tomorrow series jumps ahead to being set in 2050, a round hundred years from the present day, and a much more comfortable amount of time in the future than forty years. Swan and Fischetti do the art on this story, which is really much the same as almost every Hollywood based story, despite it’s science fiction locales.

Some one is sabotaging the production of a movie, and Tommy is assigned to find the culprit. Along the way,he acts to prevent acts of sabotage, all of which gets caught on film.

In the end, Tommy stops the one trying to halt the production, and winds up starring in a hit film.

Dan Barry takes the gradual development of the Vigilante’s motorcycle a dramatic step forward with the introduction of the Vigilante-cycle in this story.

An inventor presents Vigilante with a new, upgraded version of his bike. He is hoping to make money selling copies, with the Vigilante’s endorsement. There is a rival businessman, trying to buy the rights to the bike for less than they are worth. He insists the cycle is unsafe, so Vigilante runs a series of highly publicized tests. The rival tries to sabotage these.

That’s the plot in a nutshell. The rest of the story demonstrates the impressive array of abilities this cycle has – everything but flight, though it can do rocket-powered leaps. A successful “upgrade” of the series, in an increasingly technophiliac age.

It’s really curious that a generic Superman image was chosen for the cover of Action 146 (July 1950), considering the amount of dynamic visuals in the story.

Stone statues begin to come to life throughout Metropolis, in this story by Woolfolk, Boring and Kaye. Luthor is the one behind it.

Luthor brings the Statue of Liberty to life, to battle Superman. He has quite a time with it, not wanting to destroy the monument, and finally manages to bind it to its pedestal.

As a refreshing variation, Luthor brings to life a statue of Lois Lane, and endangers it, distracting Superman as he kidnaps the real woman. The story culminates in Superman battling a giant statue of himself. The ending is far too quick and simple, though.

Tommy Tomorrow works to make uninhabitable worlds safe for settlement in this story by Binder, Swan and Fischetti. It opens showing that there is dire need for this Planteers mission, as colonists have been stuck on worlds where they can barely survive. You have to wonder about why they were settled there in the first place.

The story is fun, and I love Curt Swan’s art, but the scene where they give a planetoid rotation using their space ships is just goofy.

I was struck by this page. The lightning world, and the wold beasts. It’s two different worlds, but the juxtaposition brings to mind Korbal, the planet of the lightning beasts, which appeared much later in Legion of Super-Heroes stories by the same team.

The Vigilante and Stuff are on the trail of another legend in this story by Joe Samachson and Dan Barry.

The mysterious ship int he desert, an actual legend, is called the Donna Louise in this story. An expedition is mounted to find it, and Vigilante rides a special sort of tank-cycle to navigate the desert sands. The Fiddler, not seen in many years, returns in this tale. The ship is a fake, as is the treasure found on it, and the Fiddler is pulling a huge scam.

The story clips along, lots of action and twists, and great art throughout. One of the best Vigilante tales.

That’s quite a flood on the cover of Action 144 (May 1950), but it’s not nearly as interesting as the story of how Clark Kent came to be hired at the Daily Planet.

Schwartz, Boring and Kaye delve into the past, as they recount the events that lead to Perry White hiring Clark Kent to work at the Daily Planet.

The story is told in flashback – and a flashback within a flashback, as Clark arrives in Metropolis, and recalls Perry visiting him in Smallville, and promising him a job. The story being referred to in this scene would actually come out a month later, in the pages of Adventure Comics. And both that story and this one have pretty much the exact same format. Clark Kent takes on a number of jobs, trying to get Perry White’s attention. Along the way he stops crimes as Superman.

As an adult, the first time he runs into Perry is while working as a cab driver. Clark attempts to remind Perry of his earlier promise, but the editor is all caught up in a story, and pays little attention to Clark.

Only at the end, when Clark turns in a Superman story, which gets picked up by the wire services, does Perry recall having met Clark years before, and fulfills his promise to kill him.

Gardner Fox and Dan Barry tell an entertaining story, based on the legend of the Lost Dutchman Mine, with some really great art.

In this case, two men fought to the death after finding the mine. And in some nice parallel structure, the Vigilante and another man compete to find the lost gold mine.

Stuff has only a small role in this tale, which helps keep the intensity up.

Vigilante finds a native blanket, which shows the fight to the death, and uses the landmarks shown as a treasure map.

I really like Dan Barry’s art, and overall, the Vigilante series had stronger than normal art throughout its run.

Superman may be building a youth centre on the cover of Action 135 (Aug. 49), but inside he is encased in a story by Edmond Hamilton and Al Plastino.

A scientist has developed a machine that turns people into statues. He shows off his new device to Lois Lane. Then a number of people start turning into stone throughout Metropolis.

Superman discovers Lois made of stone, and notes her pore pattern. You just know that’s a significant clue. The scientist appears on live television, turning the mayor into stone.

But it’s all an elaborate hoax, with people being replaced by stone statues. Superman noticed that they all had the same pore pattern. He toys with the criminals before taking them in, pretending to be a statue himself.

George Kashdan and Dan Barry bring the Rainbow Man out west, for another round with the Vigilante and Stuff.

The colour wheel is used, but as a weapon rather than a crime chooser. The Rainbow Man is on the trail of a dead goon’s hidden treasure, which turns out to be worthless.

William Woolfolk scripts the Superman story in Action 134 (July 1949), with art by Boring and Kaye.

In what very much feels like the opening to a late 50 or early 60s story, a man comes to the Daily Planet, asking for help running a crusading rural newspaper. Perry White thinks this is a great idea, and orders Lois and Clark to come with him.

The story actually deals very little with the rebuilding of the newspaper, and dives instead into the western environment. Superman may not ever put on a cowboy hat, but he does spend most of the story dealing with cowboy-type problems, like rescuing Lois from a stampeding herd.

Binder, Swan and Fischetti deal with the economics of 1989 in this tale. Mars needs workers, but the price of travel there is prohibitive. A man is selling contained space suits, advertised as being able to make the entire voyage for a very low price, and gets many takers.

The men get stranded partway there, as the suits are not even close to being able to do the trip. Tommy, as colonel in the Planeteers, captains the ship that rescues them. But the men accuse him of not caring about their situation, when he announces that he will return them to Earth.

So Tommy finds a variety of reasons to keep moving his ship towards Mars, including fighting a space dragon. The creatures ability to fly in a vacuum is ascribed to ether-currents. Whatever they are. The other Planeteers on the ship work to repair and upgrade the suits, and Tommy releases the men close enough to Mars that they can complete the journey.

Vigilante has to face a team of murderous thieves in this story by Gardner Fox and Dan Barry.

The Four Horsemen of Villainy wear identical black garb, and for a while, people think there is only one man, capable of astounding feats. People are so frightened that Greg Sanders finds his show has been cancelled. He is pretty mad about this, as he and Stuff travelled all the way out there, so he gets into his Vigilante costume and starts tracking the Horsemen. He figures out that there have to be more than one man.

The climax leaves Stuff to the side, as Vigilante fights and defeats all four of the horsemen.